to be young
by Lady Altair
Summary: Because even when there's a war, even when the sky is falling and you're so much older than you are, you still find the time.


_to be young_

_

* * *

_

Someone threw a Weasley Pestering Pod into the train compartment before they'd even pulled out of Kings Cross.

_Neville and Looney, sittin' in a tree_

_K-I-S-S-I-N-_

Neville had it up off the floor and back out the compartment door in a flash. Luna looked up from her Quibbler Report, her face predictably serene.

"I'm sorry people think you fancy me. If you want, I can move to another compartment."

Neville was thunderstruck. "I don't care if people think I fancy you. There's nothing wrong with you. Any one who thinks fancying you is stupid is not very smart."

Luna's eyes widened owlishly. "Oh, Neville, I'm sorry. I don't fancy you."

Neville reddened. "Well, I don't fancy you either, but I'd rather hear about Neville and Luna kissing in a tree than Neville and anyone else."

Luna beamed, leaning over to pat his cheek. "And the same for me, too, Neville. I think that's why we're friends."

"Undoubtedly," Neville said as the train rumbled and began to move.

The door slid open again, framing Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. "This yours?" Susan asked ironically, holding the feebly singing ball out to them. "Accidentally stepped on it."

"Er, no, someone thought they'd have a laugh," Neville explained, shyly smiling up at Hannah for a moment before pinking slightly and looking away.

Luna plucked the ball from Susan's hand and tossed it out the window. "We don't fancy each other," she informed the two brightly.

When they'd gone, Luna tilted her head questioningly. "What about Neville and Hannah, kissing in a tree?"

* * *

Seamus fell asleep in the common room, sprawled out in an armchair, and Lavender's cosmetics bag was too close at hand for it not to be premeditated. She snuffed and snickered into her sleeve cuff, trying to keep her giggles masked as she painted him up in glitter and rouge, and Neville somehow found himself with a glittering green pencil of some sort in hand, drawing shamrocks on Seamus' forehead as Lavender smudged a bit more glitter across his cheeks, her fingertips gentle around the still-bruised skin of his left eye.

They both paused a moment, looked up and grinned at each other over Seamus' sleeping form before setting back with their dirty deed. "What's his crime?" Neville asked, capping the dulled pencil. Lavender turned her attention back up, satisfied with the vinyl-shine peach gloss she'd just applied to Seamus's wide-open mouth.

"Told me the other day I wasn't wearing enough makeup and my scales were starting to show through," Lavender informed him, swiping the wand of the lip gloss over her own mouth.

Neville nodded contemplatively, tossing his weapon of choice back into Lavender's little bag of menace. "Don't reckon he'll have a thing to say about your makeup any time soon."

"Probably not," she agreed, settling back down into the armchair next to Seamus' with her Charms homework.

* * *

Padma nudged her in the back, sliding a slip of parchment onto the seat of her chair with utmost caution. Susan unfolded it, reading:

_So, once upon a time there was this lumpy old hag…_

Susan kept her face perfectly straight, dipping her quill into the well of ink.

…_who hated the whole world for being prettier than her. _She drew a rough caricature of Alecto, which resembled a potato with a very tiny head and stick limbs, and tickled Hannah on the back of the neck with her quill and passed the note.

By the end of Muggle Studies class, there was a long and engaging tale of Hag-Potato Alecto and her illicit affair with Snape. Morag had drawn a particularly hilarious stick-figure sketch of the Headmaster, which resembled an upside-down mop with a large nose.

"Can you imagine how much trouble we could get in for something this stupid?" Mandy asked, almost conversationally, as they all walked to lunch. No one really replied.

Mandy began the story in Dark Arts. _One day, Amycus fell in love with a merman in the lake…_

She passed the note. There was another story by the time class was over.

* * *

"I like the flowers, Lavender. Very nicely done," Ginny said, stepping back to admire their work in the dim light.

"Well, thanks! Six-point-something years of doodling in the margins of my History of Magic notes pays off," Lavender nodded, hands on her hips. "You got the pink in the hearts just the right shade of obnoxious. Reminds me of Valentine's Day under Lockhart's influence, good work."

They both froze at a slight noise, throwing their gazes around the darkened corridor. Nothing materialized, but when Ginny spoke again, it was quieter, more cautious. "Should we track a paint trail towards the Slytherin common room? Might throw the blame for a bit."

Lavender shifted, scratching the back of her head with her wand as she contemplated their position. "Nah, don't think they'd buy it. Anyone they might punish there has already got it bad in Slytherin. I'll cop this one if they catch on."

Ginny frowned a little, and made to speak, but Lavender waved her off, "Oh, hey, Colin's camera! Take a picture, quick, and let's go!"

The graffiti on the wall was blasted off by the first class, but the photograph of it circled the Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw common rooms for a very long time. Written in lurid, glittering red letters three feet high and ringed in obscenely violet floral trim and violently pink hearts, it was pretty unforgettable:

_**AMYCUS + ALECTO=**_

_**PUREBLOOD LUV 4-EVER!**_

_**

* * *

  
**_

"Truth or dare?" Ginny said, quite suddenly, in the dark of the boy's dormitory, curled in Harry's abandoned bed. The pause, full of whispering sheets and shifting mattress springs, wasn't long.

"Truth!" Parvati called out, from behind the curtains of Ron's bed.

Ginny paused, thinking of a question. "The Yule Ball! What was it like going to the Yule Ball with Harry?"

Parvati threw back the hangings, settling back onto the bed with her pillow curled in her arms. "No offense, but it was rather awful! He did not want to be there with me; found my own good time in the end, though, so I can't be mad at him. S'pose I had a better time with him than Padma had with Ron. No offense again about your brother…speaking of, hey Lavender! Truth or dare!" She fell back over her bed, yanking open the curtains on the other side.

"With that lead-in, I think I'm gonna have to take _dare!_" came Lavender's voice, not from Dean's bed, but from the other direction; Seamus'.

"What are you doing over there, slag?" Parvati cried, tossing a pillow across the room to stir the hangings. The curtains rippled as Lavender's hands grappled through them in search of a seam in the red velvet and she popped her head out, grinning.

"That sounds like a truth, not a dare." Lavender grinned foxily, declining to answer with a naughty arch of her brows.

"Right then, _dare_ you to come out from behind those curtains right now!" Parvati said. Lavender seemed to shrug and slid out from behind the curtains, moving her hands up and down to indicate the presence of clothes that Parvati had so doubted.

"Fully clothed, _thank you very much. _Absolutely nothing funny going on," said Lavender, smoothing her silky pyjama bottoms over her hips smugly.

"Absolutely nothin' _fun _ya mean," Seamus grumbled sleepily, sitting up and rubbing at his pillow-creased face.

"C'mon, let's get everyone in on this: Neville! Truth or dare!" Lavender pushed the hangings on the last bed open, hopping on and jostling the bed up and down on all fours.

A very world weary sigh could be heard over the squealing bedsprings; seven years in a Gryffindor house had taught him that Parvati and Lavender in a girlish mood were not to be deterred or distracted. "Truth."

Lavender was prepped to pounce. "Who do you fancy most?"

After a thoughtful silence, he answered: "Professor Sprout, absolutely."

This was obviously an unsatisfactory answer, because Lavender stole the pillow from under his head and whapped him with it. "C'mon, Nev, don't be shy, it's all right if you fancy the pants off me, no one could blame you."

"No, no," Neville said resolutely, wresting the pillow out of her hands. "Definitely Sprout. I keep on with the Herbology, just hoping, _someday_, she'll realize my true feelings."

"Can see where you're coming from, Neville. It's the hair, I think," Seamus agreed. "How could you look twice at this skinny old bird—" he tossed his own pillow at Lavender, "—when Pomona Sprout is somewhere in this castle? I mean, the way her greying hair sticks out from that hat, the dirt under her nails…sorry, Lav, there's not much to be done."

"I understand," Lavender said fairly, laughing herself. "Ginny! You! Truth or dare?"

"Hey, hey Brown!" Neville protested, "My turn, I've just confessed my secret love for Sweet Pomona, I think I should get a go."

Lavender laughed, throwing her hands up in surrender. "By all means, Leader Longbottom, the floor is yours!"

"So, Ginny, truth or dare?"

"Well, _dare,_" Ginny said, flopping onto her stomach at the foot of the bed, propping her chin in her hand.

"Hmm," Neville considered theatrically, "This has to be good, nothing but the most outrageous for Ginny Weasley…hmmm. Well, in the vein of the ridiculous we seem to have fallen into, I dare you to steal something from Snape's office."

There was a long pause. "Gryffindor's sword is in Snape's office," Ginny ventured, with a little too much gravity.

And, somehow, nobody laughed at that.

* * *

On the first day of class back from Christmas holidays, when it had become clear Luna was not returning, Lavender and Parvati pulled their hair back and charmed pairs of 'dirigible plums' into earrings.

By the end of the week most of the girls from the DA had them, and the Carrows recognized it for the undercurrent rebellion it was.

"I hope they don't scar up too badly," Susan Bones said with passing interest, concentrating on the textbook in front of her as Ginny cleaned her bloodied ear, ragged from where Alecto had ripped the earrings out. "I have so many pretty pairs of earrings."

"Nah," Mandy Brocklehurst replied, who was securing a gauze pad to her own ear by wrapping spellotape around her entire head. "I've ripped out earrings on accident before; they heal up just fine."

* * *

"It was brave, you know, what you did." Ginny hadn't had a single conversation with Michael since their relationship's rather unfriendly end, and there was no short amount of discomfort in her words.

His mouth twitched weakly, trying to smile. "Is she all right?"

Ginny nodded. "Hannah's brushing her hair, calming her down. She's good with the littler ones."

"She is."

And that was it, there was nothing more either had to say. "Take care, Michael," Ginny said.

"You, too. Thanks, Ginny."

* * *

"Ugh!" Lavender cried, managing to pack an ocean of revulsion into a single sound. "You freeze right there, Seamus Finnigan!"

She pointed a cautionary finger at him, and Seamus stopped stock-still a little ways from her, his arms frozen halfway open as he rushed to embrace her. He looked down at himself in confusion. "What?"

She swept her finger between him and Neville accusingly. "You two smell awful! What have you been doing, rolling around in the Weasleys' swamp for fun? You need baths something terrible. I feel like _I _need a bath just standing in the same room."

Neville ducked his head, surreptitiously smelling himself. Seamus met her critical gaze squarely, lowering his arms. "There isn't a bathroom in here, Lavender, we don't have much of a choice," Seamus explained shortly. "We've been washing up as best we could in the Hog's Head, it's not like we're not trying! God forbid I touch you, haven't seen you in two weeks," he grumbled to himself.

"No bathroom?" She frowned, removing one hand from her hip to point over his shoulder. "Where have you been going to—ugh, _nevermind_. That's a question I'm more than happy to leave unasked." She shuddered. "Is that where that door goes, then? The Hog's Head?"

Seamus turned, frowning in confusion. "What door?"

"I suppose she means that one that just shimmered into being over there," Neville said sheepishly, already moving towards it.

"You mean it honestly didn't occur to you to _ask _the room for a shower?" Lavender sighed. "Boys, honestly. Go on then, before I pass out from the smell of you two."

"All right," Seamus agreed, swooping in to kiss her quickly. "Be back in a bit!"

Lavender sputtered, wiping at her mouth. "You brush your teeth, Finnigan, before you try that again!" She threw her bag down in the corner underneath the new hammock that had appeared and sighed, surveying the unholy disaster the two had made of the room.

"Boys are nasty," she huffed, picking up a discarded sock with her wand, holding it away from her like a biohazard. The Room helpfully supplied a hamper.

* * *

"Anthony, are you trying to ask me to be your girlfriend?" Morag asked gently.

"No! Absolutely not!" The cry was so forceful and horrified that Morag pulled her hand back from his forearm, looking hurt.

"Well, if that's what you're saying, er—sorry, sorry," Morag stammered, her forehead wrinkled in embarrassment and disappointment as she backed away. "I guess I should, er, be getting back to the common room. If you're needing anything else, I'm supposing Lisa could--."

"No, no, not like that!" Anthony said in a panic, pulling her more securely back into the niche behind the third-floor statue of Belinda the Beldam. "I don't _want _you to be my girlfriend, that would be dangerous! I just, er, don't want you to, y'know, be anyone else's girlfriend. You know," he finished awkwardly.

"Oh." Morag's face creased anew. "That's stupid."

"Uh, yeah, it is." Anthony fiddled with his glasses and then shoved his hands in his pockets.

"How about I be your girlfriend, and we just won't be telling anyone about it?" Morag proposed reasonably.

"Er, yeah. Okay."

Morag fluttered, as though moving to leave and then reconsidering. "Okay, Anthony." She stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a tentative kiss to his mouth. She pulled back shyly, her whole face a delicate pale pink beneath the flyaway auburn halo of curls. "Should go," she muttered, throwing her gaze to the floor and ducking out of the niche, back towards the Ravenclaw common room.

Anthony was still pink when he got back to the Room of Requirement.

* * *

Mandy returned from her food run to the Hog's Head with a certain inappropriate cheer about her.

The first thing to emerge from her bag was, in fact, not food but a bottle of vodka. This was followed by a bottle of gin, a bottle of rum, and two bottles of firewhisky, all of them of the cheapest and most loathsome brands available. Incidentally, there _was _food in the bottom of the bag, but everyone's preoccupation with that had dissipated after the first bottle of alcohol.

"Aberforth _gave _you these?" Neville asked skeptically, holding the rum by the bottleneck.

"Well, _no," _Mandy replied disdainfully. "I picked them up while he was in the loo, but I left forty galleons on the bar! More than enough payment for this shite! What I paid was highway robbery, if you ask me," she finished, nobly wounded by his unspoken accusations of theft.

"This was a terrible idea, Mandy," Neville said wearily, watching Seamus, who was dancing around with a firewhisky bottle like it was the Quidditch Cup.

"Probably not one of my wisest ideas," the Ravenclaw agreed, taking the bottle back. "But look! Everyone's so excited! It can't hurt to have a party, right?"

Neville had to admit he hadn't seen such good cheer in the Room of Requirement…well, ever. Susan already had the seal off the vodka bottle and was busily mixing drinks with one of the bottles of lemonade Mandy had brought back, handing them out to whoever wanted one (which seemed to be everyone). It somehow still seemed like a horrible idea.

Mandy transfigured a silver sickle into a silver shot glass. "Here," she consoled, cracking the seal on the bottle and pouring him a measure. "I'm sure it'll look smarter after a few drinks."


End file.
